INTERVIEW WITH Paolo Pedercini

Paolo Pedercini is an Italian game developer working under the name Molleindustria. His games, such as Unmanned and Phone Story are often political interventions.

This is part of the interview series for my Handmade Pixels book.

The interview was conducted on November 24th, 2017.

 

Jesper:	Can you introduce yourself?
Paolo:	My name is Paolo Pedercini. I’ve been making games since around 2003 under the name Molleindustria. It’s mostly a personal project, although I sometimes collaborate. I’m currently teaching at the Carnegie Mellon School of Art in Pittsburgh. I’ve been in the United States for about ten years and at CMU for about eight. I mostly teach game design and creative coding within an art context.
Jesper:	Generally, if somebody asks you what you do, what answer do you give?
Paolo:	My day job is teaching, so I'm a professor. I also make satirical, experimental video games dealing with political issues.
Jesper:	Do you sometimes call yourself an artist?
Paolo:	Yes, I do. I think people started calling me that first. This might be relevant to the "indie" label; I started making this stuff before the term "indie" was around. Of course, there were independent game developers and an Independent Games Festival, but originally, they were mostly small projects or companies trying to become major players. It wasn’t culturally defined yet. I didn't have that specific audience or network, so I mostly ended up hanging out with artists—net artists, software artists, and those involved in tactical media or socially engaged work.
Jesper:	When did you see that change? You’re saying that now there’s more of a community or places to exhibit your work—when did you see that shift occur?
Paolo:	For me, it’s because I’ve mostly been making online games. That space existed—Flash games were basically "proto-indie." You had some of the characteristics of the scene there, and that’s how many prominent independent developers started, like Edmund McMillen. But I was never really active in the community of online games. To me, what convinced me that something significant was going on was seeing people like Cactus (Jonatan Söderström), Mark Essen (Messhof), and Stephen Lavelle (Increpare). They were making bizarre, unhinged games and releasing them almost every week. Stephen Lavelle and others were making these action-based arcade games that were stylistically quite different from a lot of Flash games. It felt like there was something deeper happening. As I started to get interested, I realized there could be a space between the art world and the commercial world, akin to independent filmmaking or independent comics.
Jesper:	We were emailing about this in 2010, where you made a comparison between independent games and independent music, urban gardens, hacker spaces, and so on. Do you still see independent games as part of that, or do you feel parts of independent games have moved somewhere else?
Paolo:	I think it's still part of that broad cultural moment, which has been going on since at least the 70s. I think it’s still a good comparison, even for those who aren't interested in the cultural aspects but are more focused on the economics. There was an interesting panel on the so-called "Indiepocalypse" at GDC, maybe last year. These were professional, commercial independent developers, and they saw it going two ways. One is the "independent movie" model, where you have independence and experimentation, but also very high capital and high barriers to entry. The other way is the "indie music" model, where everyone can participate and it’s not capital-intensive, but nobody makes any money. It’s a bit of a caricature and a simplification, but it’s interesting how indie game people still see themselves in comparison to other media and scenes.
Jesper:	That's interesting to me. It's clearly a term that people use in an aspirational sense. Even if you go back, the first Independent Games Festival was held in response to a call asking, "Where is our Sundance?" They wanted a Sundance Festival for games. But at the same time, independent film is sometimes defined by its relation to major studios. Kill Bill or Terminator 2 are technically independent movies, which becomes a bit weird. Do you like that label—"indie" or "independent"?
Paolo:	I’m fine with it; I think it still serves a function. One of the themes in those two early talks was that people were already starting to question it—who gets excluded? A lot of "indie" is aspirational, but it's also a form of branding. It’s not as confrontational as I wish it were. It doesn't put itself in a position against the game industry. The IGF, for example, started within the industry. It wasn't a genuine grassroots movement that got co-opted; it almost spun off. It started as a "minor league" for indie game makers and then became a bit more "cocky" or confrontational.
Jesper:	I see that. IndieCade is meant to be more of an alternative than the IGF. I also think of "indie" as something involving a lot of infighting. "Indie" carries an idea of being authentic. There’s a mainstream that is compromised or too popular, and then there’s a "right" way to do it called "indie." I feel there are ongoing conflicts within the group about what constitutes "real" indie development. Do you see that, or do you see yourself as being outside that group?
Paolo:	That conversation has always been there. It emerges all the time, like at the IGF. Every time a major event happens—like when Minecraft showed up. It was independent, made by one guy, but it was also one of the most mainstream games ever. There was a huge debate about whether we should give Minecraft the IGF Grand Prize. Eventually, it won because it retained that independent spirit—it was weird and quirky, at least at that point. Then you have the free-to-play or clone industries; are these people independent? They are small, they aren't "majors," and they are doing things AAA developers don't do, but there's no "indie spirit" there.
Jesper:	It’s actually in the IGF description now; it says a game has to be made in an "indie spirit." I have interviewed developers with different slants—some see themselves as artists, some as game developers, some see themselves as being on a continuum with the mainstream industry, and some see themselves in opposition. One thing I've read from you is the idea of appropriating video games or exposing ideologies and "infiltrating" the mainstream. Do you see video games as a political vehicle?
Paolo:	I think so, but it's mostly just me. I’m interested in the expansion of the scope of video games as an expressive medium, not just politically but personally. All the work coming out in that sense is in line with what I’d like to see, even if it’s not part of my personal practice. That’s the exciting part of the "indie" thing because it enables and emboldens that use of the medium. To me, the political aspect is also related to game-making as a practice and an industry. If you check the Scratchware Manifesto by Greg Costikyan, who is an industry insider, it already had all the bullet points being discussed now that remain unsolved. It talks about working conditions within the big industry, the sense of alienation, the "bloating" of projects, and the conservatism—when you have huge capital, you take fewer risks. That aspect is important; it’s not just about the product itself but about the process. I started to understand that later when I met people from the industry or people leaving the industry to go into independent development. When I was in Italy, that was still a bit foggy to me because I wasn't hanging out with professional developers.
Jesper:	Games are a great example of precarious work conditions. I want to talk about money. You mentioned Patreon in one of your talks, and if I read it correctly, you see Patreon as being preferable because you pay a person rather than a product. Can you explain why that is better?
Paolo:	In my recent talks, I’ve been increasingly concerned about the context of games in general—not just the creation, but where they are consumed. I talked about this at the Games for Change festival this year. They asked me for a talk, and I had to force myself to think about the narrative of what I’m doing right now. My interest has moved more into the issue of the context of a game versus its content. Money and the process of creation are part of that. Within a framework, I’m trying to look at structures that point toward more autonomy and sustainability. I thought Patreon was interesting because it disrupts the "I give you money for a product" model. It’s not "games as a service" where you subscribe to a game that you get in pieces over time. But it’s interesting because it takes publishers and middlemen with capital out of the equation. It's also a way to gauge demand without risking as much, though it might lead to "information pollution" because you have to promote an idea before it even exists. But I think Patreon is even better because it’s more sustainable. It's not based on big projects. With Kickstarter, if you're starting a big project, you can maybe do two in your lifetime before people get tired. Patreon is based on the idea that an artist might have a more diffused production, which works well for comic artists, podcasters, and things like that.
Jesper:	Doesn't something like Kickstarter or Patreon favor people who are likable or look good on camera? Is that a problem?
Paolo:	I think so. It probably depends on the sub-industry. If you’re a YouTuber and your appearance is on camera, that’s probably the case. But I Patronize people whose looks I don't even know. If they are game makers, you don't really have to be "out there." But there are issues. I have a comic artist friend who is a close friend of mine who depends on Patreon. She was very frustrated by a subset of her followers expecting constant production. That "I pay for something and I expect a doodle every week" logic enters back into it. A platform doesn't destroy that cultural logic, but I think it’s a step in the right direction.
Jesper:	As a design question, when I play your work, I see various design decisions being made deliberately with larger political goals in mind. In your earlier games, like the McDonald’s Video Game and Phone Story, you take well-known genres or mechanics and reuse them for different purposes. Is that a criticism of conventional game genres?
Paolo:	That’s been my "spiel" for many years. My projects are a combination of two approaches. One is the "agitprop" approach, which comes from my activist background and how the project started. There was a political event, and I made a game as an "interactive leaflet." On the other hand, the other part is related to the tradition of Situationist détournement or culture jamming. It’s not just about spreading a message using interactive media; it’s about providing a counterpoint to clichés and genres—to make people think about those other games. The McDonald’s Video Game is not just about how bad McDonald’s is, but about the underlying assumptions of all management games—the allegory of control and extractivism. I’m still doing that with city games.
Jesper:	In a later talk about video games and the spirit of capitalism, you made an argument about how video games are based on cybernetic logic. You talked about throwing a wrench into that machine. Part of video games comes from machines made for the military. If somebody picks up a strategy game today, is it making them think about the world in a counterproductive way? Does it work on a concrete psychological level, or is it just the history of this kind of thinking?
Paolo:	I was thinking about the specificity of the medium—the "medium is the message" idea. Digital media are not infinitely malleable; they carry aspects of the computational and algorithmic ideas that were built into the technology. We are building our games upon layers and stacks of technology that carry their own bias. They force the content to be formed in certain ways. You’ve made games as well; there are certain things that are just easier to make. It’s much easier to make a shooter. That’s not because a shooter is inherently easier than simulating artificial intelligence, but because the technologies we inherited push us toward grids, optimization, and resource management. I don't think it's coincidental; we are riffing on those cybernetic concepts.
Jesper:	You pointed to "stranger" games like those from Tale of Tales or Proteus, which work in alternative ways. You're proposing two strategies: taking a traditional game form and using it for different purposes, or breaking game form and traditional assumptions about games. Is that correct?
Paolo:	I probably proposed those two approaches and everything in between. Since games are a bundle of math, algorithms, and cybernetic bias, one way to temper that is to add a narrative element—a story—to disrupt it. The other possibility is to leverage that system bias and make it talk about the present state of affairs in a critical way. You take a management game but add the "broken" part of that management. You're still leveraging the systemic nature, the resource management, and the reduction of quality into quantity, but you're outlining the limits of that worldview. I think Cart Life or Papers, Please represent this well. At their core, they have these resource management engines, but in competition with that engine, you have a narrative story going on. Papers, Please is a very dull, bureaucratic thing, which is a back-to-the-roots look at what computers were originally made for. On one side you have ballistic computation for bombs, and on the other you have the IBM database tradition—demographic control and cataloging. Papers, Please re-evokes those themes while injecting a narrative that problematizes it.
Jesper:	As a final question, what makes you choose certain visual styles? You don't have games with realistic 3D graphics. I know this can come from doing things in Flash, but how do you choose a visual style, and what do you think it does for your games?
Paolo:	In part, it’s defined by what is easier in the medium or the tool. There’s a consideration of economy there. That said, early on I was trying to be in dialogue with "casual games." I was interested in the dialectical relationship between the seriousness or darkness of the content and the "cutesy," non-threatening nature of the visuals. For each game, there are different considerations. The McDonald’s Video Game is isometric because that’s the point of view that typifies management games. I wanted Nova Alea to look like an architectural model. Queer Power is probably the most "realistic" one. In Unmanned, since it's a bit more serious, I wanted the protagonist to be a bit "uncanny" and even kind of ugly. In early sketches, he was cute, but I wanted him to be closer to the "rugged hero" of a AAA game, like the space marine from the early Doom, so I could then emasculate that hero by making him do trivial stuff—playing the part of the pathetic hero bombing people from far away and not being a real soldier.
Jesper:	Tell me the story about Phone Story. You made a game about inhumane working conditions and the company that makes the phones [Apple] rejected it. How did that happen?
Paolo:	The game was put out as an educational game. It didn't have anything particularly graphic. It went through the approval process and the censorship review. At that point in 2010, not many games had been rejected for political reasons; maybe one or two. I wasn't sure if they would keep it or not. I designed it as a series of individual vignettes that were readable as images—you see one image and get what the game is about. I was expecting potential censorship, and I didn't want the kind of scandal that happened with Slavery Tetris. I wanted the point to be clear even from a still image. I wish it had stayed on the store because there was a monetization and fundraising idea to donate the money.
Jesper:	The way you distribute the game is part of the meaning.
Paolo:	Yes, it was about stepping up from the representational level. If I made that game elsewhere, I’d just be accruing cultural capital based on the depiction of other people's suffering. In this case, there was an opportunity to do something because it was in a marketplace where people are expected to pay. It was connected with the "Yes Lab," a spin-off of the Yes Men. They promoted and supported it. When it got on the store, people started saying, "Download this quickly before it's removed." It surprised me that there was this passive acceptance that something against the store’s bottom line would be removed. About five hours after it started making the rounds, I got a phone call from Cupertino. A guy literally told me they were taking it down. They didn't even send an email.
Jesper:	Thanks for taking the time, Paolo. This was super interesting.
Paolo:	All right, thanks.